Brutalism in Chile

Chile developed a strong concrete modernism in the 1950s and 1960s, driven by state housing agencies and university commissions, in a country where reinforced concrete was also a seismic necessity. The firm Bresciani Valdés Castillo Huidobro designed the Unidad Vecinal Portales (Villa Portales) (1966) in Santiago, a large housing estate of blocks linked by elevated walkways that became a landmark of Latin American collective housing.

A more esoteric line came from Juan Borchers, whose COPELEC (Cooperativa de Servicios Eléctricos) (1965) in Chillán, designed with Jesús Bermejo and Isidro Suárez, is a dense sculptural manifesto in raw concrete, often cited as Chile's most original brutalist building.